
Poison Tea
How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP
- 273 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"
Poison Tea shines a spotlight on the shadowy Koch brother network and reveals hidden connections between the tobacco industry, the reclusive billionaire brothers, and the Tea Party movement. It's a major story that for too long has been underreported and poorly understood."—REP. HENRY WAXMAN, a former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
How did today's Tea Party movement really come to be? Did it suddenly appear in 2009 as a spontaneous response to Barack Obama and health-care reform? Or was its true purpose and history something far different. Was it in fact a careful, strategic effort by two of the planet's wealthiest individuals, the tobacco industry, and other corporate interests to remake the government and seize control of one of our two national parties, ultimately gaining both the White House and Congress?
Jeff Nesbit was in the room at the beginning of the unholy alliance between representatives of the world's largest private oil company and the planet's largest public tobacco company. There, they planned for a grassroots national political movement—one that would later be known as the Tea Party—that would promote their own corporate interests and political goals.
Drawing from his own experience as well as from troves of recently released internal tobacco industry documents, Nesbit reveals the long game that these corporate giants have played to become a dominant force in American politics.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Introduction: The Tea Party Movement—Sudden Appearance or Calculated Move?
- 1. An Unholy Alliance
- 2. The Playbook
- 3. A Critical Bridge: Ron Paul and the “Patriot” Movement
- 4. Smedley Butler, a Fascist Coup, and the American Liberty League
- 5. What Drives Charles Koch?
- 6. The Man Behind the Curtain
- 7. Why David Koch Never Loses
- 8. Tobacco Documents Trail
- 9. COFIRE
- 10. Enough is Enough
- 11. Allied Forces
- 12. CART
- 13. Get Government Off Our Back
- 14. The Tobacco Strategy
- 15. A Road Map for Antigovernment Anger
- 16. Mobilization Universe
- 17. The Quarterback
- 18. Seamless Transition
- 19. Sleight of Hand
- 20. Five Pillars
- 21. The Sam Adams Alliance
- 22. Propaganda “Dressed Up as Journalism”
- 23. Capturing the States
- 24. Structure of Social Change
- 25. A Blueprint Years in the Making
- 26. Winning
- Acknowledgments
- Appendix 1: Acronyms
- Appendix 2: Koch Industries Connections
- Appendix 3: Key Events
- Notes
- Annotated Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
- Contents
- Copyright